Is there a special scent that can trigger a cascade of memories for you? Or a song that sends you to another time and place? Are you the type of person that remembers faces but not names, or people but not their phone numbers? How does memory work? How is it that one child can look back on their upbringing with joyful memories, and their siblings who grew up in the exact same household remember a completely different experience? If memory is selective, how do we remember accurately and is it possible to improve our memory?

Whether you need memory enhancement for school and testing, or job performance or simply greater enjoyment in life, this HeartStart call is for you.

Most people wish that they had a better memory. And yet I remember, as a junior high school student, admiring my brother for being able to let go of grudges and negative experiences the same way our dog would shake the rain off his back. He simply did not remember the negative things people had done or said to him, and in that was an instant innocence and forgiveness that led him to be one of the most popular people in our school. His social grades soared. I, on the other hand, could ace my history tests with a near photographic memory, but I also remembered every little thing someone said or every little detail I thought Iíd gotten wrong in life, and drove myself to deep depression and anxiety and alienation.

There is no question that memories are intimately related to emotions. My anatomy and physiology teacher in grad school also happened to teach us Western Medical Terminology (talk about a lot to remember!), and was the favored teacher of many of us. This was because he knew, and often said, that memory is linked to emotion and so he would tell us wild stories about his days during the Vietnam war that would illustrate every anatomy or physiology lesson, to help us anchor what we had learned. All we had to do was draw up the emotion the story created, and then we would remember the content of the class for our exams. That was a great teaching tool, and a technique you can learn to enhance and improve your memory in the areas that matter to you! Click here to find out more through our beginner HeartMath Webinar.

There are many different types of memory- emotional memory, cellular memory, memory for numbers, memory for faces, memory for names, long term memory, short term memory. They are beginning to understand that different parts of the brain hold different aspects of our memories. This is why it is possible to lose one part of your memory but keep others, the way my grandmother with Alzheimers would forget who I was or why she had walked into a room, but could tell you precisely what happened to her in the one room schoolhouse she taught in during June of 1919. While different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain, research from The Institute of HeartMath has shown us that when the heart is beating an ordered pattern (which occurs when we feel positive emotional states like appreciation, care, enthusiasm, compassion or love) the heartís signal facilitates the higher brain centers, harmonizes all the different aspects of the body and brain, and gets them working together. Perhaps this is why Chinese Medicine has always attributed memory to the heart, not the brain?

Stress causes chaos in the heart rhythm, which then scrambles the heartís signals to the brain, and causes us to shut down certain brain centers associated with memory. This is why smart people do stupid things and become forgetful when they are stressed out. Excess levels of stress hormone are being looked at as probable players in diseases like Alzeimers and dementia because of their impact on the brain. The good news is, we can improve our brain function and reduce our stress hormones- with the power of the heart.

Time and again I see tapping my heartís intelligence, improving my own memory and that of my clients. When I forget where I put my keys or insurance papers, I simply do a Quick Coherence®(taught in our Beginner HeartMath Webinar) and within seconds I have the missing item in hand. More poignantly, I have had the privilege of working and learning alongside women with severe brain damage, one due to MS and the other due to a car accident. These women shared with me how important tapping the power of the heart was to recover their functional memories again. One of them would find herself in the grocery store not knowing where she was or how she got there between the celery and the carrots. She would then use a HeartMath tool, and it would bring her attention back to the moment so she could find her way home. The otherís brain damage was so severe that at times she lost her memory of how to speak, and could not remember words. She told me that when she would apply the Quick Coherence technique or the Heart Lock-In® technique, she would literally watch the words come back to her brain like a page opening on a book.

Tune into to tonightís HeartStart call to find out more, and to hear some tips on how to remember what you learn!

I've been borrowing an emWave from a friend for about 2 months....its been incredibly helpful in, yes, making a shift from worry and fear - and longing to be in my heart, to actually having a tool to use to confirm for me that I'm there. Getting more of a felt sense of how it feels to be in a more coherent state. I had been doing a heart-based meditation off and on for a few months before meeting the Emwave, but somehow having a tangible tool to check my progress is really useful.

For more information about our four evening HeartMath class series e-mail register@fyera.com

The power of heartfelt memories to know that we matter

Can you imagine what your life would be like if no one ever took a single photograph of you, and there was no record of your childhood? How would you know that you matter, if no one cared what you looked like, no one bothered to chronicle your growth or tell you how beautiful and important you were?

This is what it is like for the children living on the streets of the world. No one bakes them birthday cakes, and no one is there to take photos while they blow out the candles each year. They do not receive that very subtle but super important message that they matter to someone.

For this reason, to communicate to children around the world that they matter and can make a difference for other children too, the Memory Project was founded by Ben Schumaker. www.thememoryproject.org

The Memory Project is a unique initiative in which advanced high school
art students create original portraits for children who have been
abandoned, orphaned, abused, or neglected. To do this, the art students
receive pictures of children who are waiting for portraits, and then
work in their art classrooms to create the portraits. Once finished, the
portraits are delivered to the children, and the children are then
invited to create drawings or write letters to send back to the art
students.

With many thanks to our longest standing volunteer, Tory Haslinger, Sunflower SunPower Kids were selected to receive portraits of themselves painted by high school students in Texas.

Many of us have hundreds of photos of our past. For many of these children, one portrait is all they have to remember by. For just $10 you can provide the necessary materials for a child to receive a portrait. Can you help?

Fyera! Beginner HeartMath Workshop

People who are either looking to get the edge in their performance, struggling with all different types of stressors, or have loved ones who are, can benefit from the Fyera! Beginner HeartMath Workshop.

In the Beginner HeartMath Workshop taught at Fyera! you will
Learn the science and physiology behind feeling good.
Learn the science and physiology of what gets in the way of feeling good: ie stress.
Learn how to feel better more often by transforming stress, and receive ways to help those you love do the same.

Sign Up Now!People who are either looking to get the edge in their performance, struggling with all different types of stressors, or have loved ones who are, can benefit from the Fyera! Beginner HeartMath Workshop including those with:

Whether you or someone you love has a health concern they want answers for, or is seeking relief from anxiety and depression, this workshop is a place where you can hear the how-to of how to start- with the power of the heart.

To register for a Fyera! Class:
Call (626) 844-7171email: register@fyera.com
Gift certificates, scholarship donations and scholarships also available

Fyera is a trademark of Sheva Carr. HeartMath is a registered trademark of the Institute of HeartMath. Quick Coherence is a registered trademark of Doc Childre. Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved.